Reality Matters
I thought I would talk about the recent shootings by police and shootings of police, mainly to have all the details in one place.
Tuesday July 5 2016
On Tuesday July 5th police killed Alton Sterling, a 37 year old black man, outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge. They had been called by someone who claimed that Alton had threatened him with a gun. Alton did have a gun. The police attempted to arrest him and he resisted arrest. He was taken down to the ground with a struggle, and while the police (two officers) were struggling to subdue and cuff him, one of them said "He's got a gun!". One of the officers shot Alton multiple times in and he died.
I think the police definitely handled the situation poorly, although of course it is easy to say that sort of thing sitting at your computer, not fearing for your life. There was no evidence that racism had anything to do with the altercation or death, since the police were responding to a call and dealing with an armed suspect. It's hard to believe that racial bias was an important factor in the situation, given the other factors.
Alton Sterling had a lengthy criminal record.
Wednesday July 6 2016
Police pulled over a car with Philando Castile, his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and Reynold's daughter. In the video she made, Diamond Reynolds claims that the police said they pulled them over for having a tail light out. That was probably a ruse used by the police. Based on a police scanner recording, it appears that the police pulled them over because Philando was a visual match for a suspect in a recent armed robbery. There is security camera footage from that robbery that shows a man who looks like Castile holding a gun. So, the police presumably approached the vehicle with caution.
Philando Castile was shot by one of the officers. After he is shot, the woman, Diamond Reynolds makes a video recording of her dying boyfriend and her interaction with the officer. In the video, she says that her boyfriend was getting out his wallet and the officer says that he told him to keep his hands visible, or something to that effect. I watched the video but I don't remember the exact words. Philando may have told the officer that he had a gun on him, then reached for his wallet, and the officer interpreted his action as going for his gun. It isn't clear exactly what happened.
Again, race doesn't seem to have been a factor in the event. Philando Castile does look very similar to the suspect, and he might have been the armed robber. The circumstances of the interaction were probably much more important in determining the actions of the officer than the race of the suspect. The officer who shot Philando appears to be either Latino or Filipino. His name is Jeronimo Yanez. I think he exercised poor judgment -- in general I think the police are too trigger happy these days -- but it certainly was not a racially motivated police execution.
Philando had a long record of misdemeanor traffic offenses, such as driving without a license and driving without insurance. He had been accused of some minor drug offenses, which were dismissed. Apparently, he portrayed himself on Facebook as a Crip member. Videos and photographs have emerged that don't portray him or Diamond in a particularly good light, such as the two of them smoking a blunt in a car with the child in the back seat.
Now, for the government and media response. It was the usual race-baiting bullshit.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton said that there is every indication that excessive force was used in the Philando Castile shooting. He also said "Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver were white? I don’t think it would have." What he was basing that on, I don't know.
Fuck you Mark Dayton.
President Obama said "But regardless of the outcome of such investigations, what’s clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve."
Fuck you Obama.
Google, our unofficial Ministry of Truth, tweeted this pile of garbage:
#AltonSterling and #PhilandoCastile’s lives mattered. Black lives matter. We need racial justice now.
We're devastated by the senseless deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Today, Googlers held vigils in their memory, and in memory of all those like them whose lives have been cut short unfairly.
We stand in solidarity with the fight for racial justice.
Fuck you Google.
Twitter tweeted:
These tragedies must lead to action. We join the voices demanding racial justice now.#AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile.
Fuck you Twitter.
I won't bother going over the litany of media outlets pushing a race-baiting narrative rather than doing journalism.
Then, on July 7, the day after the Philando Castile shooting, there was a BLM march in Dallas. During that march, a man named Micah X. Johnson started shooting at police. Apparently, he was wearing body armor and had an AR-15 semi-auto assault-style rifle and a handgun. He started shooting at police from a vantage point near the protest. During the gunfight with police he killed one officer at point blank range. He was eventually cornered in a parking garage, at which point the police attempted to negotiate with him. After an unsuccessful negotiation, the police used a robot with a bomb to kill Micah Johnson.
12 police officers were shot, 5 of whom died, and two civilians were wounded.
Micah Johnson had served in the military in Afghanistan but was discharged without honor for sexual harassment. He was 25 years old. He supported various black power and black activist movements online. He told the police during their negotiation that he wanted to kill white people, especially police.
Now I'm going to talk a bit about the reality of race and crime versus the myth.
The "racist cops are killing blacks" narrative does not fit the facts. It depends on ignoring the reality of black crime rates, especially for violent crime. Blacks commit violent crime at much higher rates than whites. The disproportionate number of black men killed by the police can be explained simply by the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by black men. Once you take the racial disparity in crime levels into account, there is basically no evidence for racial bias in police use of excessive force. I've talked about this before, and you can go look up the data for yourself.
As I write this, on July 10th, there are more protests going on, there were protests last night, and there have been other attacks on police.
This is the inevitable consequence of denying reality. These riots and attacks were not caused by racism against blacks. Blacks are not oppressed by whites in the United States. The opposite is true. For more than 50 years, the US has attempted to eliminate the differences between blacks and whites by cultural and social engineering. The media portray black people in an artificially positive way, not a negative way. They conceal the facts about black crime. In TV shows and movies, the villains are almost always white, and blacks, even when they play villains, are portrayed in a sympathetic way. We teach children that white people oppressed others with slavery and colonialism. There are affirmative action programs that discriminate against white people and in favor of black people. Racism is the greatest thought crime in the modern West.
All this cultural and social engineering has not changed the reality of racial differences. Favoring blacks over whites did not erase the differences between blacks and whites, or reverse them, because racism was never the cause of those differences.
The myth of black oppression is the cause of these riots and attacks. It provides a moral justification for blacks to fight back against their supposed oppressors: white people and the police. As long as our government and media perpetuate this myth, we should expect more riots. As long as our society capitulates to the violence of the mob, we should expect more mob violence.
Sources and related links:
Alton Sterling:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/baton-rouge-alton-sterling-shooting/
Philando Castile:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/10/falcon-heights-philando-castile-shooting-update-radio-dispatch-and-dash-cams/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/08/the-curious-case-of-philando-castile-falcon-heights-mn-police-shooting/
http://gotnews.com/breaking-philandocastile-falconheightsshooting-crips-gangmember/
http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/philando-castile-criminal-record-arrest-record-police-racial-profiling-criminal-history-rap-sheet-felon-crime-falcon-heights-minnesota-police-shooting-facebook-live-video-watch-lavish-reynolds-diamond/
Dallas shootings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police_officers
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/10/dallas-police-chief-david-brown-extensive-interview-explaining-attack-videos/
Race, crime and police use of excessive force:
http://www.copinthehood.com/2015/04/killed-by-police-2-of-3-race.html
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/enforcement_report_year_end_2014.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21678800-only-certain-thing-about-citys-murder-rate-it-increasing-unsolved
Tuesday July 5 2016
On Tuesday July 5th police killed Alton Sterling, a 37 year old black man, outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge. They had been called by someone who claimed that Alton had threatened him with a gun. Alton did have a gun. The police attempted to arrest him and he resisted arrest. He was taken down to the ground with a struggle, and while the police (two officers) were struggling to subdue and cuff him, one of them said "He's got a gun!". One of the officers shot Alton multiple times in and he died.
I think the police definitely handled the situation poorly, although of course it is easy to say that sort of thing sitting at your computer, not fearing for your life. There was no evidence that racism had anything to do with the altercation or death, since the police were responding to a call and dealing with an armed suspect. It's hard to believe that racial bias was an important factor in the situation, given the other factors.
Alton Sterling had a lengthy criminal record.
Wednesday July 6 2016
Police pulled over a car with Philando Castile, his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and Reynold's daughter. In the video she made, Diamond Reynolds claims that the police said they pulled them over for having a tail light out. That was probably a ruse used by the police. Based on a police scanner recording, it appears that the police pulled them over because Philando was a visual match for a suspect in a recent armed robbery. There is security camera footage from that robbery that shows a man who looks like Castile holding a gun. So, the police presumably approached the vehicle with caution.
Philando Castile was shot by one of the officers. After he is shot, the woman, Diamond Reynolds makes a video recording of her dying boyfriend and her interaction with the officer. In the video, she says that her boyfriend was getting out his wallet and the officer says that he told him to keep his hands visible, or something to that effect. I watched the video but I don't remember the exact words. Philando may have told the officer that he had a gun on him, then reached for his wallet, and the officer interpreted his action as going for his gun. It isn't clear exactly what happened.
Again, race doesn't seem to have been a factor in the event. Philando Castile does look very similar to the suspect, and he might have been the armed robber. The circumstances of the interaction were probably much more important in determining the actions of the officer than the race of the suspect. The officer who shot Philando appears to be either Latino or Filipino. His name is Jeronimo Yanez. I think he exercised poor judgment -- in general I think the police are too trigger happy these days -- but it certainly was not a racially motivated police execution.
Philando had a long record of misdemeanor traffic offenses, such as driving without a license and driving without insurance. He had been accused of some minor drug offenses, which were dismissed. Apparently, he portrayed himself on Facebook as a Crip member. Videos and photographs have emerged that don't portray him or Diamond in a particularly good light, such as the two of them smoking a blunt in a car with the child in the back seat.
Now, for the government and media response. It was the usual race-baiting bullshit.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton said that there is every indication that excessive force was used in the Philando Castile shooting. He also said "Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver were white? I don’t think it would have." What he was basing that on, I don't know.
Fuck you Mark Dayton.
President Obama said "But regardless of the outcome of such investigations, what’s clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve."
Fuck you Obama.
Google, our unofficial Ministry of Truth, tweeted this pile of garbage:
#AltonSterling and #PhilandoCastile’s lives mattered. Black lives matter. We need racial justice now.
We're devastated by the senseless deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Today, Googlers held vigils in their memory, and in memory of all those like them whose lives have been cut short unfairly.
We stand in solidarity with the fight for racial justice.
Fuck you Google.
Twitter tweeted:
These tragedies must lead to action. We join the voices demanding racial justice now.#AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile.
Fuck you Twitter.
I won't bother going over the litany of media outlets pushing a race-baiting narrative rather than doing journalism.
Then, on July 7, the day after the Philando Castile shooting, there was a BLM march in Dallas. During that march, a man named Micah X. Johnson started shooting at police. Apparently, he was wearing body armor and had an AR-15 semi-auto assault-style rifle and a handgun. He started shooting at police from a vantage point near the protest. During the gunfight with police he killed one officer at point blank range. He was eventually cornered in a parking garage, at which point the police attempted to negotiate with him. After an unsuccessful negotiation, the police used a robot with a bomb to kill Micah Johnson.
12 police officers were shot, 5 of whom died, and two civilians were wounded.
Micah Johnson had served in the military in Afghanistan but was discharged without honor for sexual harassment. He was 25 years old. He supported various black power and black activist movements online. He told the police during their negotiation that he wanted to kill white people, especially police.
Now I'm going to talk a bit about the reality of race and crime versus the myth.
The "racist cops are killing blacks" narrative does not fit the facts. It depends on ignoring the reality of black crime rates, especially for violent crime. Blacks commit violent crime at much higher rates than whites. The disproportionate number of black men killed by the police can be explained simply by the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by black men. Once you take the racial disparity in crime levels into account, there is basically no evidence for racial bias in police use of excessive force. I've talked about this before, and you can go look up the data for yourself.
As I write this, on July 10th, there are more protests going on, there were protests last night, and there have been other attacks on police.
This is the inevitable consequence of denying reality. These riots and attacks were not caused by racism against blacks. Blacks are not oppressed by whites in the United States. The opposite is true. For more than 50 years, the US has attempted to eliminate the differences between blacks and whites by cultural and social engineering. The media portray black people in an artificially positive way, not a negative way. They conceal the facts about black crime. In TV shows and movies, the villains are almost always white, and blacks, even when they play villains, are portrayed in a sympathetic way. We teach children that white people oppressed others with slavery and colonialism. There are affirmative action programs that discriminate against white people and in favor of black people. Racism is the greatest thought crime in the modern West.
All this cultural and social engineering has not changed the reality of racial differences. Favoring blacks over whites did not erase the differences between blacks and whites, or reverse them, because racism was never the cause of those differences.
The myth of black oppression is the cause of these riots and attacks. It provides a moral justification for blacks to fight back against their supposed oppressors: white people and the police. As long as our government and media perpetuate this myth, we should expect more riots. As long as our society capitulates to the violence of the mob, we should expect more mob violence.
Sources and related links:
Alton Sterling:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/baton-rouge-alton-sterling-shooting/
Philando Castile:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/10/falcon-heights-philando-castile-shooting-update-radio-dispatch-and-dash-cams/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/08/the-curious-case-of-philando-castile-falcon-heights-mn-police-shooting/
http://gotnews.com/breaking-philandocastile-falconheightsshooting-crips-gangmember/
http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/philando-castile-criminal-record-arrest-record-police-racial-profiling-criminal-history-rap-sheet-felon-crime-falcon-heights-minnesota-police-shooting-facebook-live-video-watch-lavish-reynolds-diamond/
Dallas shootings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police_officers
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/10/dallas-police-chief-david-brown-extensive-interview-explaining-attack-videos/
Race, crime and police use of excessive force:
http://www.copinthehood.com/2015/04/killed-by-police-2-of-3-race.html
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/enforcement_report_year_end_2014.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21678800-only-certain-thing-about-citys-murder-rate-it-increasing-unsolved
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